Rustic Circle master bathroom re-do: Oct ’16-Feb ’17

It was a great bathroom. We loved the aqua ’50s tile and the funky pink marble countertop. But the floor was collapsing and the weirdly shaped cabinets were crazy making for an OCD organizer like me. We contracted with a home renovator to make a new bathroom, plus paint our bedroom, hall bathroom, and long and decrepit living room. The process started with a bang in October, then went moribund midway, and in January picked up again.

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So last fall we made the leap. First step was to tear out the old. (The countertop was saved for re-use elsewhere.) The space was so small we decided to take in a hall closet.

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The interior walls to the bathroom were insulated, but the wall facing the outdoors was only partly done. Not sure what that was about.

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Here’s the hall side of the ex-closet. It was a very hard texture to match. The brick panels were actually flooring, but it was no longer manufactured. So our fabulous painter reconstructed it! We later roughed up the edges and painted it to match,

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Ah, the beginnings of a floor that won’t swallow us whole.

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We also renovated the attached dressing room. When we removed the mirrors over a counter, we found this funky ’50s wallpaper that celebrates the female form. The house’s original owner, Nick DeGeorge, was a bit of a rake.

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On to the new bath. Scooter did the design and layout, and selected the fixtures, tiles, wallpaper and paint with a little help from me. First step, the new tub gets set in. It’s deep enough to soak in and has Jacuzzi jets. I am ecstatic.

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Water-resistant hardyboard is installed as backing for the tile. The old tile method used a chickenwire mesh and loads of mortar. Taking it out was a huge dusty mess.

With the completion of the bathtub tile, and the glossy subway tiles around the toilet alcove, prep begins for the wallpaper.

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Countertop! Wallpaper!

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Along the way, we raised the ceiling of the bathroom over a foot and replaced the disgusting skylight

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The dressing room in process.

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The dressing room almost finished. This wallpaper makes me happy.

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The shower door is just so fabulous, much more sturdy than our prior one. Sleek!

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Adore the inset granite shelves.

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Fabulous shower head. It attaches to its holder by magnets. That will never not be cool.

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Lights, mirror, counter!

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Love this countertop granite. We had our hearts set on a pink countertop, but every granite showroom we went to had none. Instead all the colors were in Earth tones and gray. Finally, a granite showroom guy had pity on us and sent us to their storage yard in West Dallas. (“Now you understand, it’s not a showroom, it’s all outside, no one to help you.”) And there were all the colors deemed currently unfashionable by designers, including our perfect pink, at an incredible price.

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So pleased to have cabinets that make sense and drawers that roll smoothly, or just roll at all (prior ones were wood sliding on wood).

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Yes, I am going to make you look at my toilet. It has a bidet seat! And more fabulous inset shelves.

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The bathroom flows beautifully into the dressing room. The control box on the tile wall is for the heated floor. There’s so little counter and floor space, fitting in a space heater would be tough. Since we only heated a center strip down the middle, it was affordable. And 13-year-old Mable’s bones love it.

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All moved in!

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Painting the living room was a major ordeal. It’s 32 feet long with a sloped high ceiling. Parts of the ceiling fell in when we replaced the roof a few years ago. The paint was so thin we could see the studs. It was kind of creepy.

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It was rainy during this, and the house humidity was so high the painting plaster wouldn’t stick. We had to buy a portable dehumidifier. That led us to discover that the crawl space humidity was around 95% and rising into the house. Fixing that is another story, a rather pricey one.

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After the painting, we refurbished the wood floors, a process that entailed a lot of mopping. A whole lot.

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The more or less finished product. Still have art to place on walls and shelves. Just ignore the toilet in a box in the middle of it.

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Love our sage color wall.

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We also painted the entire bedroom a light blue. Very serene. It wasn’t nearly so disgusting, well except the windowsills which had buckled under the humidity and disintegrated. Dig the cool owl light fixtures.

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We made a cool table with some of the leftover granite.

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Did some work in the hall bathroom as well. It had the same weird ceiling issues as the living room. So we painted it and installed this way cool light fixture. Problem with that. Now that we have actual bright light in the bathroom, we can see how terrible the paint job is on the cabinets and door. More to do.

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The floor also sucks. When first re-doing the house 25 years ago, we read that big tiles make a small room look larger. Nope. Just weird. So new black tile soon.

Amy Martin

Amy Martin is the North Texas Wild at GreenSourceDFW and author of Itchy Business: How to Treat the Poison Ivy and Poison Oak Rash. More info at http://itchy.biz/. Most frequently she was the senior comedy critic for TheaterJones, The Aging Hippie columnist for Senior Voice, and the Taoist panel member of the Texas Faith blog of The Dallas Morning News. A journalist for over 40 years, she wrote for Dallas Observer, Dallas Times Herald, Dallas Morning News, and D magazine, and was contributing editor and columnist for Garbage magazine. She was known by many in North Texas as the Moonlady for her alternative newservice of 15 years, Moonlady News, and served as creator/producer/promoter of the acclaimed Winter and Summer SolstiCelebrations for 20 years.